Project description:

Have you ever wondered about the women who stood before you? The women who walked the same streets: 50, 75, 100, 200 years ago? What they saw everyday? What they had to endure? Where they had their biggest triumphs? Their biggest failures?

The history of women of color is all around us, for it is the history of America: it is in the ground we walk upon, the rooms we enter, in the old buildings we pass. But often our histories seem invisible, buried.

Philadelphia Young Playwrights has partnered with Germantown’s renowned Colored Girls Museum to explore these very questions. To unearth the hidden, historical narratives around the lives and experiences of women of color in Germantown.

Over the course of 12 weeks, we will use the art of playwriting to investigate how history and identity can be “hidden,” and how we can work to “discover” it through our words, our bodies, and our art.

Working with a team of professional teaching artists, a historian, and guests artists, we will be conducting interviews with local residents, and meeting and working with Historic Germantown staff to look for evidence of who and where black women were in the history of the sixteen historic homes in Germantown.

At the end of our 12 weeks, we will gather to share what we’ve learned, through a collage of monologues/character studies/notes toward potential “one girl shows”/installations based on the women we research.

To be considered to be a participant for this project, applicants must be:

comfortable working & sharing in a collaborative space

excited to learn about playwriting

open to discovery

feel comfortable reading various types of texts

have a willingness to perform

have a thirst to investigate and explore

Saturdays, March 410:00 AM - 1:00 PMVarious Locations within GermantownGirls in Grades 8 - 11An honorarium and travel stipend will be given to selected participants.